Devin Townsend on The Moth, Financial Armageddon and Becoming a Different Person

"It's just a shattered human and an acoustic guitar."

Devin Townsend said he needed a break. Then The Moth, the rock opera he spent ten years writing and premiered with the Noord Nederlands Orkest in Groningen, cost him a fortune when a company involved went bankrupt. So he went back on the road: alone, with an acoustic guitar, in a van.

This conversation was recorded near the end of that tour. Devin talks openly about what the past year has done to him: the end of a 36-year relationship, losing his dog while on the road, and the fatigue of performing every night at the edge of his emotional capacity.

We also talk about the hug with Mike Keneally after the final notes of The Moth, and why Mike changed the way Devin works with other musicians. He explains why he wrote around 100 songs last year and then shelved them, and what The Moth turned out to be about only at the very end. Anneke van Giersbergen asked a question for this episode: does Devin chase a sound, or a feeling? And yes, we also discuss the perfectly timed fart.

Above all, this is a conversation about change: the end of the people pleaser, setting hard boundaries, losing his stage fright, and learning to accept that you deserve the good things you've worked for.

Sixty Scales and the Truth: Niels Guns meets the world's greatest guitarists, face to face.